Good morning. My name is Aline Côté and I am the president of the copyright committee at the Association nationale des éditeurs de livres.
The Association nationale des éditeurs de livres represents a hundred French Canadian book publishing firms across Canada. Over the past few years, and despite all the pieces of legislation in place, we have been asking for more protection, or at least we have been constantly reaffirming the copyright principle in order to protect our capacity and stability in terms of both revenue and investment.
People do not always realize that Canadian publishers are competing with giants. Over the past 40 years, we have had to get back a significant share of the market. In the 1970s, French Canadian publishers were barely claiming 20% of their own market, the rest was being taken up by France or other countries. The situation was pretty much the same for English Canadian publishers. Today we control 51% of the market. It took 40 years to slowly conquer that share of the market, to develop expertise, to increase the professionalism of our employees and to establish an entire book industry.
We have also worked closely with the people from the Canadian Conference for the Arts to bring our proposals to the table and to reach consensus with the other cultural sectors in Canada. That was an unprecedented effort. In my view, the fact that cultural associations from all sectors, working in both languages, have managed to reach a consensus is unprecedented around the world. That takes weeks and weeks of work. We have made a series of proposals, knowing that, if they were accepted, we could really establish and develop sustainable industries in Canada that would prosper in the digital era.
The French Canadian book industry has been successful in adapting to the digital era. Very early on, we developed a business platform and model. We have developed partnerships and we now have a sale and distribution platform that is connected to all francophone digital bookstores in Quebec and in France. Our original model inspired large publishers from France, Italy and the United States to join. There is still a general feeling that the book industry is a bit prehistoric, but we have been really proactive and we have had a great success. We have received support from governments, Canadian Heritage, SODEQ, and our ministries in Quebec. We are now estimating the cost of this collective effort at about $25 million at least. Please note that these numbers are the actual math. They are not based on extrapolations or projections of potential losses, but that is what was really invested.
We now know two things. We are increasingly hearing people everywhere say that the added value of culture is a factor in sustainable development. WIPO studies have also revealed that the key to the success of cultural industries is the legal environment of copyright, of intellectual property. The two countries that currently have the best numbers are the United States and Australia and they are the nations with the strongest industries. That is where cultural industries take up the largest share of the market.
Books, physical books, disks, support materials or CDs are not our main asset. Our main asset and our only asset is intellectual property. It is not tangible.
We feel that the significant changes that Bill C-11 will bring will create an artificial disruption. We have been able to develop gradually over the years with the market rules that were in place. We have managed to take up more and more of our markets. We have a Canadian aboriginal industry—if that is the right term—that is successful, dynamic and competitive, but it could be better positioned in the market. Compared to the position of the book or culture industry in other countries, we are still lagging behind and we could do better. We still have room to grow.
We have shown that we were able to do very well with the way the game was played. The shock of the digital revolution did not affect us because we took action very early on, six years ago. We convinced the governments to give their support; we have put in about $25 million in development and private investments. And now that it is all starting to roll and we are on board, we realize that a piece of legislation might jeopardize all those business models that work well. That will create an artificial tidal wave in the current market. It is not a normal evolution; it is something abrupt when we have already developed everything that we wanted to develop.
We are also going to look at our close ties with the national education system and I hope that you will have questions about that. If our education systems had to outsource to produce materials, they would create a book industry. Our close ties with culture are very important. We feel that allowing free use without permission in education is extremely dangerous for our industry.
I will let my colleague continue.